Johnnie Robert Wright — who made significant contributions as a solo artist, a member of innovative duo Johnnie & Jack and, most famously, as the lifelong partner to Queen of Country Music Kitty Wells – died Tuesday morning at his Madison home. He was 97.

With Johnnie & Jack, Mr. Wright introduced Latin rhythms into country music and scored hits included “Ashes of Love,” “Poison Love” and “(Oh Baby Mine) I Get So Lonely.” As a solo artist, Mr. Wright billed himself as “Johnny Wright” and had a No. 1 hit with the Tom T. Hall-penned “Hello Vietnam.”

And from the time he married 18-year-old Muriel Deason in 1937, he was an integral part of her career: Mr. Wright gave Deason the stage name “Kitty Wells,” he brought her the landmark hit “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” he offered her headline status on package shows at a time when females were unfailingly relegated to sub-prime positioning, and he was a constant as a sounding board, business advisor and husband.

Mr. Wright grew up in Mt. Juliet, at the time a bucolic, country community. As a boy, he listened regularly to WSM’s Grand Ole Opry, wiggling a wire on a crystal radio set to improve the signal. His chief childhood thrill came at when Opry star Uncle Jimmy Thompson would make semi-regular visits to a Mt. Juliet feed store for impromptu performances.Continue reading →

Laura Cantrell performs Thursday at 3rd & Lindsley, playing songs from "Kitty Wells Dresses: Songs of the Queen of Country Music." (Submitted)

The place wasn’t hard for Laura Cantrell to find. You just hang a right onto a Madison street and you don’t have to worry about the address: Just look for the one house that has an old-school tour bus in the driveway.

Kitty Wells, still known today as “The Queen Of Country Music,” doesn’t have much need for the tour bus now, 45 years after her most recent Top 20 single. But it’s there, just in case. Wells and her husband, fellow country hit-maker Johnnie Wright, have retired from the music business.

They opened their door to Cantrell, a Nashville-reared, New York City-based singer-songwriter, because they wanted to hear a song of hers called “Kitty Wells Dresses,” and they wanted to hear about an album Cantrell was recording in Wells’ honor.

“As I started rattling off titles of the Kitty songs I’d chosen for the tribute, Johnnie started singing to me, and then Kitty started singing with him,” remembers Cantrell, who will perform songs from the album at a 7 p.m. show this Thursday at 3rd & Lindsley. “I thought, ‘If nothing else happens with this record, I’ve had this beautiful afternoon with them, and I’ve been able to peek in with them in a current moment. They sat with me in their den, with the NASCAR race on mute.’ ”

In this anniversary year, tributes to Lynn have flowed, with a Grammy Salute at the Ryman Auditorium, the re-release of her Coal Miner’s Daughter autobiography and a new, multi-artist album called Coal Miner’s Daughter: A Tribute To Loretta Lynn.

Fifty years is a long time to stay in the music spotlight. What was your life like when you began trying to carve out a career?

"For one thing, I had four kids in school when I started singing, and back in them days I didn’t have a washing machine or any of that.

"I was scared to death about singing, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. My husband, Doolittle, believed in me, so I had to do it. He told me I could sing, and I couldn’t let him down. So I’d sing and I’d rock them babies.Continue reading →

Author and music historian Dick Spottswood's new book is just out, and it's already in need of an update.

Spottswood will appear at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, 417 Broadway in Nashville, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 16 to talk about banjo great Wade Mainer and to sign copies of Banjo on the Mountain: Wade Mainer's First Hundred Years.

Why's an update needed? Well, Mainer is now 103 years old. So there are three more years to catch us up on.

He was a major influence on what has come to be known as bluegrass music. He played in the East Room of the White House for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, and he made his Grand Ole Opry debut in July of 2002, when he was a spry 95.

Spottswood will also be at the Texas Troubadour Theatre, 2474 Music Valley Drive, for a book signing at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 18.

The Country Music Hall of Famer, who became a pioneering figure in country music when her “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” topped country charts in 1952, is the rare Music City star to actually have been born in Nashville. She was born Muriel Deason but took the stage name Kitty Wells after a folk song, “I’m A-Goin’ To Marry Kitty Wells.” She was Billboard’s top female artist of the decade for the 1950s and again for the 1960s.

Wells is retired now, living in Madison with her husband of 72 (count ’em!) years, Johnnie Wright.

Wells' 90th birthday celebration was held at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop's Texas Troubadour Theatre in Nashville. Click her image above to see a gallery of photos from the event.

Bill Phillips, a country singer known for his yearning, emotional vocals and for his role in introducing Dolly Parton to the record-buying public, died Monday, Aug. 23 at age 72.

Born in the western North Carolina town of Canton, Mr. Phillips first came to attention as part of Miami, Fla. station WMIL's multi-artist jamboree. Two duets with Florida-reared Mel Tillis reached the Top 30 of Billboard’s country singles chart in 1959 and 1960, but it was not until 1966, when Mr. Phillips recorded a song by then-unknown Dolly Parton, that he experienced major success.

Parton was living in something akin to poverty when Mr. Phillips heard her demo of “Put It Off Until Tomorrow,” a song she wrote with her uncle, Bill Owens. Impressed with the composition and also with the “girl singer” on the tape, Mr. Phillips recorded the song with Parton singing prominent harmony vocals. (Listen to it above.)

The song became Mr. Phillips’ first Top 10 hit, and it launched Parton’s career. Months after “Put It Off Until Tomorrow” peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard country singles chart in April of 1966, Parton secured cuts from Skeeter Davis and Hank Williams Jr., and she soon signed a record contract.Continue reading →

Jeff Bridges, in a scene from 'Crazy Heart' (photo: Fox Searchlight/Lorey Sebastian). SPOILER NOTE: Plot points related to this film's ending are noted in this story.

There are moments in the film Crazy Heart, as Jeff Bridges’ character drives hundreds of miles to play for drunks at a bowling alley or devolves into desperation, alcoholism and humiliation — all for what Townes Van Zandt called “the sake of the song” — that beg the question, “Why on earth would someone do that for a living?”

Like dozens of Nashville troubadours, Bridges’ Bad Blake is highly intelligent, well-read and charismatic. He doesn’t have to slog from town to town, playing for diminishing audiences. Except maybe he does.

“I don’t think he has much of a choice in the matter,” said Bridges, who patterned his character after Van Zandt, Stephen Bruton, Billy Joe Shaver, Kris Kristofferson, Greg Brown and other singer-songwriters who’ve lived the weariness and discomfort of the road. “The stage is Bad’s kingdom. Drunk or sober, he’s at home up there. And he loves the music so much.”

It’s a life that is understood by those who live it, but it often looks from the outside like a pathway to insanity, even if alcohol isn’t a part of the equation.Continue reading →

Queen of Country Music Kitty Wells, center, often spent time in her kitchen with daughter, Ruby Wright, and granddaughter Kitty Elizabeth Stephenson." (Frank Empson/The Tennessean/file, 4/13/1965)

Ruby Wright, the singing daughter of Johnny Wright and Queen of Country Music Kitty Wells, was found dead on Sunday at her Madison apartment. She was 69, and had been battling heart problems.

Ms. Wright’s best known single was her 1964 “answer” to Roger Miller’s “Dang Me.” Her version was called “Dern Ya,” and it was featured in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s recent Kitty Wells exhibit. Ms. Wright also recorded in the late 1950s as “Ruby Wells” in the trio ‘Nita, Rita and Ruby: The “‘Nita” of that group was Anita Carter, the youngest daughter of country music matriarch Mother Maybelle Carter.

In 1952, Muriel Deason — known in the music business as Kitty Wells — had a plan that didn't involve becoming a pioneering legend of country music.

"I was going to stay home, be a homemaker, stay with the children," she told an audience of well-wishers at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop's Texas Troubadour Theatre on Sunday afternoon, where friends, fans and family came to celebrate the Nashville native's 90th birthday. "It was hard for a girl to get started in the business at that time."

Each "girl" who has gotten started in the music business in the past 57 years has done so in no small part due to Wells, who recorded "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" in May 1952 and became a million-selling artist. She proved to record companies that females could be successful in what was then a male-dominated industry.Continue reading →

Country Music Hall of FamerKitty Wells, the Queen of Country Music whose classic recordings include “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” and “Making Believe,” turns 90 years old on Sun., Aug. 30.

A Nashville native in a town of transplants, Wells paved the way for Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette and others, and she did so with grace and humility.

Sunday at 2 p.m., some of her friends and fans will gather at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop’s Texas Troubadour Theatre, to honor Wells with words and songs.

The event is closed to the public, but the Eddie Stubbs-hosted show will be broadcast live on AM 650, WSM.

Click HERE to see a slide show of decades-spanning Kitty Wells photos.